Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

“I think I’m good.”

“Cool. Are you hungry?”

Dave talks me into joining him and Mark for dinner, and takes me to their favorite restaurant, Sam’s No. 3. By the time I’m on the road back to Mercy, it’s after nine p.m.

The majority of our missions occur in large cities, not so much in rural settings. When I’m home, I’m in Los Angeles, one of the top twenty metropolitan areas in the world. So being in the countryside is rare for me. And though this is the same drive I took this morning, at night with no moon it’s completely different.

All I see around me are miles and miles and miles of darkness. It’s as if the world has ceased to exist beyond the halo of my headlights. And yet, the sky is ablaze with stars.

It is both awe-inspiring and, I have to admit, slightly terrifying.

I’m not sure when it happens, but at some point, I realize Liz has joined me in the cab. At first, I think she’s come to tell me something, but she seems content to just ride.

I want to ask her where she goes when she’s not here. I want to know if she’s happy. But most of all, I want her to be honest with me about what she wants me to do.

Because for the first time, I realize I do want to move on.

It’s when I have this last thought that she turns to me, a smile on her face, sweet and soft and filled with love and regret and understanding and fear.

I don’t know what she’s trying to tell me.

That it’s okay for me to move on?

That it’s not?

I take a deep breath and center myself. When I look over again, she’s gone.

But of course, she was never there.

As much as I always look forward to seeing her, I know these illusions are holding me back. Wait, it’s more than that. They’re crippling me by preventing me from fully living.

I just don’t know how to tell her goodbye.

A few minutes after midnight, I receive a message from Jar.

Where are you?

Using my phone’s voice-to-text function, I respond:

Twenty minutes away. Maybe less. Everything okay?

Jar:

Something for you to see when you get here.

A few minutes later, the lights of Mercy begin to cut into the darkness ahead. It is a welcome sight. Soon enough, I’m driving through the quiet town and pulling into the driveway of our duplex.

With my new suit draped over an arm and the duffel bag with the items from Dave in my hand, I head to the house.

Jar opens the front door before I get there.

A sense of warmth fills me the moment I see her. I smile, but before I can say, “Hi,” the oh-boy-have-I-got-a-story-to-tell-you expression on her face stops me. “What is it?” I ask.

She huffs a laugh, then motions for me to come inside.

The duplex has a small entranceway that opens into the living room. I step through this, intending to carry the bag over to the card table, but I get only a single step beyond the foyer before I stop and stare.

Sitting in one of our two folding chairs, wearing a mask, is Evan Price.

Chapter Eighteen

I blink once. Twice. Then say, “Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Evan says.

We stare at each other, like two animals unexpectedly meeting each other at a watering hole, unsure of what the other might do.

I glance at Jar. She gives me a kind of I-warned-you shrug, but she most definitely did not. Not about this.

“Can you give us a moment?” I say to Evan. Without giving him a chance to respond, I lock eyes with Jar and jerk my head toward the back of the house, then walk into the hallway.

I’m tempted to go into the unused bedroom at the end of the hall, but if we do, we won’t be able to know if Evan moves around. So I stop just outside its door.

As soon as Jar joins me, I whisper, “What’s he doing here?”

“He says he wants to talk to you.”

“I meant, how does he even know we’re here?”

She shrugs again, this time it’s of the more common I-have-no-idea variety.

“Did you ask?”

“I asked.”

“And?”

“He only said that he would wait for you.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Since about three minutes before I texted you.”

“You could have let me know then that he was here.”

“True. But it would have changed nothing. And it is more fun this way.”

“Fun?”

A third shrug. It is what it is.

I take a deep breath and say in a calmer voice, “So he came to the door and asked for me?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him in.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“And the only thing he’s said since then is that he wants to talk to me?”

“He said, ‘Thank you,’ after I gave him a bottle of water.”

“Now you’re just trying to be cute.”

“I was not aware that I needed to try.”

It takes an act of God to prevent me from rolling my eyes. “Well, I guess we should go see what he wants, then, shouldn’t we?”

I stash the duffel and my suit in the back bedroom and we return to the living room. We have only the one additional chair, which Jar claims, leaving nothing but the floor for me.

I think she’s enjoying this.

Instead of sitting, I head into the kitchen to grab myself a bottle of water.

As I described before, the duplex isn’t that large. The kitchen and living room are a single space, divided by a counter above which cabinets hang.

As I walk back into the living room, I say, “So, um, nice to see you again.”

The words are barely out of my mouth when he asks, “What are you doing here?”

“We live here.”

His mouth tightens in annoyance. “I don’t mean this house. I mean Mercy.”

“Same answer.”

“That’s not true. I would have seen you before.”

“You haven’t seen us because we’re new here. We came for work.”

“What kind of work?”

“We’re web developers.”

“You’re doing that here?”

“The internet is everywhere,” I say, sounding as disarming as I